


Smoke and Mirrors

by BugTongue



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Car Accidents, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, This was almost MCD but I'm too soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 07:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8615548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BugTongue/pseuds/BugTongue
Summary: After the drift, Newton picks up on more of Hermann's thoughts and feelings than he ever wanted to, and then happenstance scares the bejeezus out of them both.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hermann has violent intrusive thoughts and now Newton is privy to some of that.

“You’ve been having bad dreams lately.”

Hermann wet his lips as he parsed how best to respond. Yes, his dreams had been terrible as of late, but it wasn’t as if they’d ever been grand. Newton was looking at him, looking through him, and waiting with a stern set to his mouth.

“Yes. Have I been waking you up?”

“No.” Newton swallowed, looking away only for his gaze to warily slide back to Hermann’s face. “I’ve been picking it up, I think. Like some kind of…. Some kind of radio. I can’t change the station from one oh three three, the mathematician.” He shivered and brought his hands up to tuck them into the warm slip of his neck.

“I’m sorry.” There was no hiding the twinge of regret in his voice, no real reason to besides the desire to save face. A ridiculous notion, even if he hadn’t shared a mindspace with the other.

“Why do you keep dreaming about that? Why me?”   
  
Hermann let out a long puff of steam, eyes closing. “I couldn't say but it isn’t as if I’m a psychic, I am not foretelling your future.” That made Newton laugh and hunch his shoulders. He pulled out a thin cigar and lit it up, biting on the manilla mouthpiece. When he spoke, it was muffled.

“You could be. Maybe you were all along and it just took being traumatized for it to come out.”

“I am not an X-man, thank you.” He smiled thinly and shifted his weight so their arms touched. “None of those dreams, none of my nightmares have ever or shall ever come to pass.”   
  
“You keep dreaming about it though. You keep, keep, perseverating on it. Are you worried I’ll go and do something stupid and get hurt? Am I worrying you that much? Because I have to say you really need a hobby that’s less morbid. Like, masturbating, or collecting Yu-Gi-Oh cards.” His head rolled on his shoulders until it was leaning against Hermann’s, hands still up at the sides of his neck. The fruity smoke wafted away from them before being pushed into them by the finicky wind. Hermann slipped his free arm around Newton’s waist.

“I don’t believe you fully appreciate how daunting it is to care about someone with as little self-awareness as yourself. You disastrous manchild.”   
  
Newton reached up to pull the cigar from his lips, craning his head away to squint at him in thought. “Y’know, you have no right to talk like that. Sure I’m a handful but you’re on so many narcotics I can barely keep track of the dosage you should take verses the dosage you  _ do  _ take. That’s not even getting into the way you climb around on your ladders and speed. You speed every time you get behind that wheel.”

“I go at a speed that I can maneuver with full confidence.” Hermann sniffed and looked away to take in the rest of the city park. The ground was covered in snow and a few families were out building snowmen and hurling the white filth at each other while screaming. He considered scooping some down the front of Newton’s shirt but decided he’d rather not lose the reliability of his eardrums.

“You go at a speed Danica Patrick would have been wary of.”   


“Absurd.”   


“Whatever.”

They watched as a few children build themselves safety barriers out of snow, taking a break from throwing it around. Newton’s cigar burned down swiftly, rarely leaving his lips. Hermann squeezed him gently.

“It started after we drifted.” Newton looked at him curiously. “I don’t know why, I don’t believe it means anything. I've always had bad dreams, but before it had only ever been me inside my mind. I suppose the drift crossed a few wires.”

“Does that mean you used to dream of yourself?”

Hermann inclined his head in affirmation, then snatched the nearly finished cigar away to take a drag. The smoke caught in his lungs once before he exhaled smoothly. Newton pulled away with a shiver.

“Come on, let’s get back in the car, it’s fucking cold out.” He hurried up the pathway with the expectation that Hermann would either follow or stand outside alone. He did follow, but his thoughts lingered on their conversation.

There were some who thought that thinking about an outcome gave it the power to come true, that worrying led to actuality. Hermann disagreed. He worried constantly, he worried himself sick on more than one occasion and yet so rarely did it ever amount to an ounce of truth. As rational as he aimed to be, as level-headed as he saw himself, there were some irrationalities beyond his control. The dreams were only a manifestation of that innate anxiety. But Newton was fine, as was he. 

He bent to put the cigar out in the snow, heard the car door shut, and as he straightened back up he was disoriented. There was a rush of sound as another car slid across the icy road and into his, just meters away. He froze up, his cane clattering to the ground before he was able to command his hands to grasp tighter. He grabbed it up and rushed to the car.

“Newton, Newt-Newton!” He smacked the glass a few times, unable to see inside through a mix of tinting and airbags. He looked up over the hood at the other car, its driver already stumbling outside apologizing profusely. “Yes, yes I bloody well hope you’re sorry now shut up!” Newton’s door unlocked and Hermann stumbled back to allow him out.

“Jesus Christ, oh man, no okay Herms you gotta stop looking at me like that because if you pass out I’ll seriously have to punch you until you wake up.” He turned around to the other driver. “You got insurance?”

“Newton sit down, you must, you are bleeding from the face. Again.” Newton turned back to him with a furrowed brow, hand jerking up to tap his upper lip and come away red.

“Shit. That’s fine, no seizure.”

 

***

 

“I told you none of them come true.” Hermann held onto the mug of coffee in his hands as he sat at the dining room table, laptop open and papers surrounding him awaiting a grade. “Not a single one of them.”   
  
“Funny of you to say that because I definitely recall a car accident being at least one dream you’ve had, maybe a few times.”   
  
“Yes but if it were according to my dream, this would be a one-sided conversation, in the morgue.”

Newton shrugged and pulled his feet under the blanket, turning back to the television. “It’s still weird. I don’t like that you think about me or yourself dying horribly so often.”

“And just what do you propose I do to stop  _ thinking _ , then?” The grading could wait, he wasn’t all that keen on doing it just now anyway. He shut the laptop with a soft click and rose from the table to shuffle over and sit beside Newton on the couch, pulling the blanket aside.

“Not stop thinking, stop worrying. Stop focussing on worst case scenarios. It’s not healthy.” That made Hermann snort as he pulled the blanket over his knees.

“I know that. Unfortunately I cannot will them away and I’m already taking enough medication, I don’t need to add any more to my list. Good lord are you watching Godzilla again?”

“It’s a comfort movie dude, I just got hit by a car.”   
  
“You were inside another car and suffered no injuries.”   
  
“I suffered emotionally and bled out of my nose. If you’re going to nitpick my interests you can go back to your work.” He settled down when Hermann leaned more securely against him.

“I told you my nightmares don’t come true, neither does my worrying. I’m sorry it’s been bothering you so much but you needn’t get yourself in a tizzy just because of something I’ve been dealing with since childhood. It doesn’t bother me that much.”   
  
“That much hunh, so it does bother you.”

“Watch your movie, Newton.”


End file.
